


Growth Habits of the Strange & Bizarre

by Superstition_hockey



Series: Witchering Pays but Botany Doesn't [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Botany, Geralt becomes a YouTuber in his old age, M/M, Modern Day, Not really an AU but sort of, Post canon sort of, Roach is a Chevy, Road Trip, Wildlife conservation Witchers, internet crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24428947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey
Summary: The days of horses named Roach have long passed. The current Roach is a brown, square-body Chevy that he’s had since he bought it new, decades ago. He’s rebuilt the engine four times.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Witchering Pays but Botany Doesn't [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666258
Comments: 70
Kudos: 462





	Growth Habits of the Strange & Bizarre

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of the fic series Witchering Pays but Botany Doesn't, a series where Geralt is a witcher, but also a misanthropic amateur botanist who makes YouTube videos about plants, Rivia is the Chicago of the Northern Realms, and Jaskier is trying to slide into his DMs.

The days of horses named Roach have long passed. The current Roach is a brown, square-body Chevy that he’s had since he bought it new, decades ago. He’s rebuilt the engine four times. 

Geralt has a Toussaint driver’s licence, since that’s where, technically, still, he owns land. Easier paperwork that way, and the closest thing he’s ever had to a permanent address. Geralt winters there most years. Every couple decades, some paper pusher in the Beauclair tax office thinks it must be a technical error that Geralt’s not dead, or that his birthday is a typo, and Geralt has to spend an hour on the phone saying no he's not an elf, no he's not a human. He's a witcher. No, he doesn't know why Witcher isn't an option on the census form, nor does he care. Yes, Witchers still exist. Yes, he's really that old. Yes, he has all his documents. 

Technically, he doesn’t _need_ anything like a permanent address for paperwork. He has a Witcher passport, which lets him more or less pass through any border he wants, but it’s easier, for most little things, to use his driver license for an ID check, like he’s a normal person. 

The Witcher passport means he never has to use the other passport that’s hidden down in the bottom of his bags. Gold with a black sun embossed on the front, Empress Cirilla’s profile an ethereal glimmering watermark on each page. 

Some countries have laws, these days, about sleeping rough. Some don’t. The days of leather bedrolls are long gone, too. Geralt got his sleeping bag, inflatable sleeping pad, and one-man backpacking tent from the REI garage sale, like everyone else. 

If given a choice, Geralt would almost always rather sleep outside, than in a hotel or motel. The smells are too strong -- even clean, they then stink of disinfectant. And anyway, it’s hard to sleep with a roof over his head in the summer. Hard to bear the walls. Hard to breathe when he can’t feel the night air. The indoors is stifling. Humans are too much. 

He has a Church of Melitele Gym Club membership that’s good pretty much anywhere on the Continent -- there’s one in every town. Good for working out, and for the showers. He doesn’t really need anything more than that. 

Rivian Public Radio contacts him. It takes him three days to get back to anywhere with enough reception to check his emails. He’s been working with some fucking grad student out of Oxenfurt, tracking kikimora spawning patterns for some biomed research. They’re a protected species, these days. Geralt was there as a guide, a tracker, and to keep everyone safe. The dumbfuck grad student and the kikimora. 

RPR wants to interview Gerry from Rivia about his channel and his newfound internet fame. 

Geralt snorts, and shoves his phone back in his pocket. He and the grad student and the grad student’s undergrad pack mule get seated at the roadside diner. Geralt orders pancakes and bacon and listens to the undergrad tell him about his journey towards being Gluten Free. 

“Hm,” Geralt says. 

His phone buzzes. It’s not RPR, just Eskel sending him a picture of the Kovir National Zoo’s newest, expanded cockatrice enclosure. Three times the size. Eskel was there for months, consulting with them on that, and their draconid conservation program. Nice to see it looks like they actually took his advice. 

_Nice,_ he texts Eskel back. 

Geralt parts ways with the Oxenfurt students in the diner parking lot after their meal. They get on the road back to Oxenfurt. Geralt goes to find the nearest CMGC. He lifts for an hour while his clothes wash and dry. He showers, changes, packs all his shit back up and gets back in Roach. 

He goes to a coffee shop, gets an iced latte and a piece of pumpkin bread, and opens his laptop and tries to figure out how to answer RPR. 

Geralt likes Public Radio. He listens to it a lot while he’s driving. And he drives a lot. He doesn’t want to be an ass. But this is not Geralt’s fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe Gerry of Rivia cares that he had a viral video with fifteen thousand likes. 

Geralt is… was… is so famous. No, infamous. So _infamous_ that he’s passed through fame, into legend, and back around again into a fame so ubiquitous that he has essentially returned to obscurity. The obscurity of being _historical_.

A name in a school book that everyone remembers from a third grade history lesson, but no one knows or cares about beyond that. Most people assume he’s dead. 

He probably should be. Witchers used to live a hundred, two hundred, maybe three hundred years. And yet Geralt, and Eskel, and Lambert and even Vesemir are still alive. Too stubborn to die maybe. 

Geralt can’t meet with RPR to do a video interview the way they want. The white hair is… well anyway, all Geralt can say about his white hair is a silent thanks to whatever “influencer” made the dyed gray look “hot” on Instagram. He used to get _looks_. It used to make people more likely to recognize him. Now it’s just his eyes. 

Maybe he could wear sunglasses, if he did an interview. 

Geralt emails RPR back to say that his schedule is unpredictable and not really suited to in-person interviews. It’s not “fuck off,” which is what he wants to type.

He spends an hour answering emails. Some work related -- looks like he’s heading to Novigrad soon. Some are personal. He sends photos of some flowers he saw during his last job to Ciri. He sends a gif of a wolf puppy tripping over his own too-big feet and trying to howl to Lambert asking _is this you_? Replies to a forwarded dinner invitation to the Imperial Nilfgaardian Sorceress Lodge Summer Soltstice Fundraising Gala from Yen with a quick _fuck no_ and then deletes the email and attached tickets. 

He loves Yen. Truly. But those galas are the worst and he'd rather spend the night in the sewers hunting down drowners than get dragged to one again. 

He logs in to his YouTube account and browses the comments to his latest video, “2 min of Laticauda laticaudata, dark humor and a magnet for obnoxious, unsolicited chastisement” while sipping his second cup of coffee. 

_dandelion_ is the second comment from the top. He’s posted, “omfg ARMS?????? Arms??? And the HAND TATS. Dead.”

Geralt snorts, and, against his better judgement, does something he hasn’t been letting himself do. He clicks _dandelion_’s username. He’s expecting no videos, the blank userpage of someone who doesn’t have a channel of their own. 

He wasn’t expecting…. Well. He wasn’t expecting so many videos. _dandelion_’s account says “vlog channel of JaskierOfficial”. There’s a link to that channel. _dandelion_ has 157 videos and though they are apparently “vlogs” most of them appear to be more videos of a young man with sandy blond-brown hair and big blue eyes playing a variety of stringed instruments around his apartment, on the hood of a car, on the stoop at a friend’s house party, on a porch, under a tree, on a beach. There are a few earlier videos of him falling off a skateboard. There are videos of him and his band on tour, in diners and backstage dressing rooms and concert venue parking lots. There are videos of him and a number of friends, drunk improv sessions at house parties, where everyone finds an instrument and jams. 

JaskierOfficial has 23 fully produced, glossy music videos, and clips and links to interviews and concerts and live performances. Geralt puts his headphones on and listens to Jaskier’s tiny desk concert. 

He wants to hate it but he doesn’t. 

He listens to the interview. 

Julian Alfred Pankratz, stage name Jaskier, talks about trying and failing at cooking, traveling, growing up in Lettenhove, how reclaiming the Elven part of his parentage through music taught him not to be ashamed of his heritage. About his own use of social media. 

“There’s this channel on YouTube I’m so obsessed with,” Jaskier tells his interview, “it’s just this guy that talks about plants, but I don’t know, I love it.”

Geralt chokes on his coffee. 

Geralt has an Instagram. It’s private, and he barely ever posts anything. It’s mostly just for following people (Ciri’s private, non-state-official finsta). He opens it and likes a handful of her most recent posts. He types very carefully into the search bar “Jaskier”, clicks on the profile with the little blue check mark. The top three photos are Jaskier, _Dandelion_ , shirtless on a beach. He’s got too much sun on his shoulders. He’s lithe, but not too small. Enough muscle that he’d be sturdy enough if Geralt wanted to…

Geralt shuts the app, finishes his coffee, packs up his laptop, and leaves.

He wavers between getting a motel room or not, but in the end, the weather’s too nice, and he doesn’t need to. Doesn’t want to. 

There’s a public wilderness about an hour outside of town. Geralt parks Roach at the visitor’s center and hikes about an hour up a trail until he finds a good camp spot. The night’s clear, and there’s no reason to bother with the tent. 

He stops along the way, finding a meadow full of rare ginatia subspecies, fishes out his phone and films a video about them. 

He takes a few photos too. 

That night, lying in his sleeping bag, he takes his phone out again and opens up Instagram. He makes a second account -- this one not private. He gives it the same name as YouTube channel, and links to the YouTube channel in the bio. Adds the Instagram link to his YouTube profile. He uploads the picture of the ginatia flower, deep pink and delicate, petals just beginning to open. 

He turns his screen off, shoves his phone into his pack, and lies on his back, and lets himself drift, watching the stars. In the morning, he’ll need to start making his way to Novigrad. 

He sleeps. When he wakes his sleeping bag, all of him is very slightly damp with the morning dew. It’s an old, familiar feeling, comfortable, the way the night slides into morning, the way you can feel the change in atmosphere, lying on the dirt, open to the sky. He packs up his camp and hikes back down to Roach. He stops at a Starbucks for coffee and a breakfast sandwich before taking the exit onto the freeway and doesn’t check to see if anyone in particular is following his new Instagram. He turns on the radio and realizes he recognizes the tune, recognizes the voice singing it. 

He turns the volume up, and lets himself enjoy it.

**Author's Note:**

> The titles of the fics in this series, and the videos mentioned in them, are taken from or adapted from the titles of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't videos on YouTube (which I highly recommend).
> 
> Many thanks to Dangercupcake for fixing my commas. 
> 
> Don't post to other sites. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at superstitionhockey


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